


The Lantern In Your Heart Won’t Fade (just breathe)

by Chronolith



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, and he resents everyone for getting that confused, hunk is an engineer, i think i have hives, not a doctor, or diabetes, this is the fluffiest fucking thing i have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 08:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16193543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronolith/pseuds/Chronolith
Summary: "Do you see the expression I am making right now?" Hunk asks."I do, Paladin.""This is my 'I am judging you' face," Hunk says. "Because I am. I am judging yousohard right now."Hunk is an engineer, he'd like to note, not a doctor. Why does everyone keep forgetting that?





	The Lantern In Your Heart Won’t Fade (just breathe)

Hunk’s not at all sure how he became the official chronicler of Weird Human (half-human) Reactions to Weirder Space Shit, but he resents it. There are very few things about this entire ‘thrown into a ten-thousand-year-old space war with angry purple space cats’ thing that he resents more than being the chronicler of Weird Human (half-human) Reactions to Even Weirder Space Shit. 

Mostly Hunk resents the entire mess because becoming the chronicler of Weird Human (half-human) Reactions means that he is somehow _also_ responsible for fixing whatever crazy ass reaction said human (or half-human) is suffering from. He is not a doctor. He is an engineer. Does he look like someone who deals with the delicate and frequently disgusting insides of humans (half-humans)? No! No, he does not. And he resents the implication that he does.

But he can’t just leave his fellow paladins to Coran’s tender and well-meaning mercies. There are only so many Altean home remedies a body should be forced to endure before someone puts their foot down. 

Apparently, the foot that comes down is his.

(He would like to point out that in no way is taking something that looks the bastard lovechild of a garlic clove and an orange and sticking it in your armpit while jumping up and down an acceptable remedy for … _anything_. 

Sometimes Hunk thinks that Coran comes up with ‘Altean Home Remedies Even Alfor Used’ just to test the gullibility of his fellow paladins.

Hunk’s deeply, deeply ashamed that it seems to work far more often that it should.)

He would like to note, again, for the record, that he’s an _engineer_ , not a doctor. 

The general problem-solving methodology for engineering (duct tape) works less well on squishy human (half-human) bodies than he’d hope and, really, he should not be the one left in charge of this mess except for the simple fact that everyone else is so much _worse_.

Pidge refuses on general principles. Said principles being “wetware problems are for suckers” with a Significant and Pointed look in Hunk’s general direction. (He resents that, too.)

Lance manages to make everything worse with his misremembered home remedies.

Shiro has the dual sins of hiding his own injuries like a cat and then turning into the worst mother hen possible about everyone else’s. He cannot be trusted to be reasonable on the issue and had been summarily banned from the medical wards when he suggested that they use the cyropods when Keith had a papercut much to everyone’s (including his own) bemused horror.

Keith.

The less said about Keith’s concept of appropriate wound care the better.

Allura manages to be some unholy combination of both Keith and Shiro with an aggressive cheerfulness about life-threatening injuries that worries _Lance_ and Hunk’d just looked at her until she slunk silently out of the medbay.

Thus, Hunk has the questionable privilege of playing glorified nursemaid to a gaggle of injury-prone, suicidally-inclined and/or aggressively oblivious Defenders of the Universe through process of elimination. 

However, it’s not always so bad. Like today, when he can give Shiro a walleyed look and refuse a diplomatic mission on the grounds that he needs to update and organize The Chronicle. 

Yep.

Absolutely. 

Totally not dodging this mission because the Rac’ni give him the biggest set of the creeps ever. (Psionic giant spiders that use the dead to talk. No, thank you. No, sir. Hunk is out.) 

One of these days Shiro’s gonna figure out Hunk’s game and put a stop to it, but today is not that day. Today is the day that Shiro quirks a rueful half-smile and leaves Hunk to try to make sense of the esoteric self-referencing monstrosity that Pidge seems to think functions as a database management system. 

He’s about two hours into untangling her code when an emergency alert from the Blades pings across every screen—sending his heart rate rocketing towards the stratosphere. He can count on one hand the number of times the Blades have used that emergency alert and every single time it’s meant something’s wrong with Keith.

Hunk hustles out the medical bay with Coran cheerfully announcing the eminent arrival of the Blade shuttle.

“He’s not, like, dead, is he?” Hunk asks. That’s a thing he seriously worries about with every mission Keith takes with the Blades. He really doesn’t think they take into full account the fact that Keith is a small and squishy human (half-human)—not an enormous purple space cat like the rest of them.

“Oh no,” Coran says in the same cheerful manner that he announced everything from breakfast being served to the impending shut down off all critical life support. “His vitals are reading strong and steady!”

Hunk no longer finds Coran’s exuberant avuncularness particularly reassuring. More the opposite really.

“So why are they bringing him in with all alarms blaring?” Hunk asks as he rounds the corner into the hangers and fidgets with the bundle of emergency supplies—omnigel, hypercine bandages, epinephrine injector—and glares hard at the slowly opening bay doors.

“Well,” Coran allows. “Kolivan is somewhat … alarmed.”

That does nothing to alleviate any of Hunk’s concerns.

Hunk wrings his hands so tightly he can feel the small steel bar in his left hand from where he broke it years ago shift. Kolivan comes out of the shuttle with a bundle carried high against his chest. Hunk waves briefly before bustling over.

“Does he need a cyropod?” He asks breathless. “You guys should have cyropods. I have designs for a mobile pod that is self-deploying because wow do you guys really make me worry. Is he sick? I don’t see blood. I have the hypercine bandages that worked so well when he got those dichlorodiethyl sulfide burns. Oh man, please tell me he didn’t get those again.”

“Paladin,” Kolivan says in that low rumbling voice of his. “Be at ease.”

The bundle in Kolivan’s arm squirms until Keith’s head pops out of his blanket cocoon. He stares hard at Hunk for a moment. Then he makes the softest, tiniest chirruping noise Hunk has ever heard.

“Uh?” Hunk says intelligently. Kolivan sighs.

“Keith has come into contact with a type of … flora,” Kolivan says stiffly. Keith squirms in his arms making small grumpy noises.

“A plant?” Puzzle pieces slot together inside Hunk’s head slowly, but the picture doesn’t make any kind of sense. “This is an allergic reaction?” 

This would, naturally, be when Keith manages to squirm his way entirely out of the cage of Kolivan’s arms and nearly fall face first onto the hanger floor. Hunk manages to catch him thanks to reflexes he honestly didn’t think that he had.

Keith blinks up at him and then smashes his face straight into Hunk’s shoulder.

“Uh. Huh.” Hunk says, continuing his intelligent streak. 

Keith rubs his cheek against Hunk's shoulder making little happy chirping noises. Hunk cautiously pats the top of his head and raises an eyebrow at Kolivan. 

Kolivan sighs again. "The plant is known to have, ah, medicinal qualities."

Hunk squints suspiciously at Kolivan. "Did one of the Blades ... deliberately ... get Keith high?"

If it were possible for an eight-foot-tall commander of a secret ninja organization to squirm uncomfortably, Hunk is pretty sure Kolivan would be. Kolivan coughs into one fist and doesn't quite meet Hunk's judgmental stare. "Regris felt that Keith could, ah, stand to, erm, relax."

"Regris got Keith high," Hunk says. He closes his arms reflexively around Keith, bundling him away from Kolivan. He can feel his eyebrows beetle down into a disapproving glower. 

Kolivan looks like he bit into twenty lemons at the same time while being told his favorite teddy bear was on fire. "It does not normally impact Galra to this degree."

"Do you see the expression I am making right now?" Hunk asks.

"I do, Paladin."

"This is my 'I am judging you' face," Hunk says. "Because I am. I am judging you _so_ hard right now."

Kolivan sighs again. "We are concerned because Keith does not seem to be returning to normal. And his reaction is unusually strong."

Hunk heaves Keith up, holding him with one arm while he jabs Kolivan in the chest with a finger. "I am taking Keith to the infirmary. You are going to go to the bridge and tell Shiro all about how you got his best friend high and now don't know what's wrong."

Kolivan stares down at where Hunk has jabbed him with one finger. Hunk does it again to underscore his point. Kolivan frowns at him. "I understand, Paladin."

"Good," Hunk says decisively, and hitches Keith a little higher in his arms. Keith flops against him, boneless and content to rub his face all over the crook of Hunk’s neck.

Hunk turns on one heel and walks out of the hanger with his head up. Once he's in the hallway he braces himself against the wall with one hand. He just bitched out the leader of the Blades. Great. He is absolutely not having a freak out about this. Nope. Keith makes a tiny concerned noise at him and Hunk looks down to find Keith blinking up at him muzzily.

"It's fine, just a little, uh," Hunk trails off and Keith shoves his face in the crook of Hunk's neck, making happy little sounds again. "You know what? Nevermind, you are way too out of it to even care."

Hunk keeps up his irritated ramble the entire way back to the medical bay more for his own sanity than for any other reason. Keith seems entirely content to hang like a teddy bear in his arms--which is, Hunk isn't ashamed to say, messing him up. Just a little.

He drops Keith onto one of the medical cots. Or tries to. Keith winds his arms around Hunk's neck and holds on like a barnacle, making cranky noises of discontent deep in his throat. 

Hunk pats his back awkwardly. "Okay, okay. Buddy? I need you to let me go so I can run some tests."

Keith presses his face harder to into Hunk's shoulder. "No," he slurs. "Don't go."

Hunk's heart breaks just a little. "I’m not going anywhere, but you need to un-barnacle yourself, just a bit.”

It takes time and gentle persistence but eventually Keith relents enough to unwind his arms from Hunk's neck and glower up at him with an adorably disgruntled expression. "No," he says again, like a toddler giving voice to his discontent more out of reflex than anything else.

"No," Hunk says back to him. "You've got that right. This entire thing is a big no."

Keith huffs again, a little chuffing noise of annoyance, but when Hunk runs his hands around the back of his skull to check for injuries he tilts his head for all the world like a cat begging for skritches. Hunk sighs. "Dude, I am trying to check you for head injuries." 

But Keith's hair feels like silk and he's not sure he's ever seen Keith as soft and heavy-limbed as he is now, flopped along a medical cot like he's not entirely sure how to make his legs work and Hunk? Hunk is not that strong, okay? Not at all. 

He digs his fingers into that thick hair and Keith arches into the touch. When Hunk gently scrapes his nails behind Keith's ear, Keith makes a little hiccupping noise. A little chirrup of pleasure, blinks at Hunk twice, and then a small rasping sound bubbles up out of him, starting small and then reaching the same decibel as a small hand-chainsaw. 

Hunk stares. 

“Are you purring,” he asks incredulously. “Is that a thing you are doing right now?”

Keith wrinkles up his nose in thought and then shakes his head, his fluffy hair flopping over his eyes. “No.”

“Right,” Hunk replies. “No. Don’t even know why I asked you.”

Hunk pulls up the files on the plant while Keith tries his level best to curl entirely around one of Hunk’s arms, making annoyed noises any time Hunk stops petting him.

“You are making this way harder than it needs to be,” Hunk informs him. Keith rubs his cheek along Hunk’s shoulder in response.

Hunk checks his eyes (dilated so far that there’s only the thinnest strip of pretty violet visible), his reflexes (still unholy fast and Hunk’s going to have words with him about biting), his pulse, but when it comes time to try for a blood sample Keith takes one look at the needle and wails. Full on, head tipped back, wailing like a child calling for a lost guardian. 

He hastily puts the needle down. Keith looks at him disapprovingly and sniffles. Hunk’s heart breaks just a little bit more. He carefully nudges the needle under a stack of papers. Keith continues to look at him with deep suspicion. Hunk blows out a slow breath. “Buddy,” he says carefully. “You are making this way too hard. Even harder than the time you got yourself dosed with that psychoactive, refined quintessence and spent two days talking to the wall.”

Keith’s only response is to curl into a tight ball around Hunk’s arm and mumble, low and slurring: “Tired,” and pass right the fuck out.

Hunk, for the second time in under ten minutes, can only stare. “Right,” he says to Keith’s apparently unconscious body. “So, this is going to be how my day goes. Okay.”

What he _ought_ to do is wrangle Keith’s limp, sleep-heavy form into one of the nearest cots and let him sleep off the effects. That would be sensible. What Hunk finds himself doing instead is gathering him up and settling them both against the wall. He lets Keith shift against his chest until he’s got his face pressed against the crook of Hunk’s neck, nose pressed to his pulse point, and just holds on.

Hunk’s not sure how long they sit there: Keith relaxed and loose-limbed, and Hunk idly turning over random engineering problems in his head. It’s not a bad way to spend an afternoon, he thinks. Keith is unholy warm in his arms, like a little space heater, and the ambient noise of the castle’s electrical systems—the low hum of air filtration, the subtle pulse of artificial gravity—lull him into a drifting sort of daze. 

Between solving one equation and the next, he’s asleep.

Hunk wakes up to small, furtive sounds. 

Years of living with Lance has him keeping his breathing slow and steady as he listens intently.

“…wake them…”

“ _So cute._ ”

There’s a small click and Hunk sighs.

“Lance,” he says without opening his eyes. “You have thirty seconds to _run_.”

“I didn’t do it!” Lance squawks with offended dignity.

Hunk cracks his eyes open. Shiro gives him the biggest, most unrepentant shit-eating grin Hunk has ever seen in his entire life. He is also holding a little orange rectangle in the universal position of ‘I-have-just-snapped-your-picture.’ Hunk groans.

“I have no regrets,” Shiro says.

“You’re about to,” Keith growls. 

“But you were so cute!” Shiro chirps, the shit-eating grin not dropping a millimeter. Lance looks like all his Christmases have come at once as he looks between the pair of them like a spectator at a tennis match. “All cuddled up like a pair of adorable kittens.”

Keith makes a noise that reverberates all through Hunk’s chest and launches himself at Shiro, who dances backward—phone held up high over his head. There’s a brief, but spirited struggle over the phone that results in Hunk’s work table getting completely flipped over while Keith climbs Shiro like a tree making low, grumbling noises in the back of his throat while Shiro laughs his head off.

Hunk hikes himself to his feet and shouts, “Guys!” in his most authoritative voice. When they look back at him, Keith hanging off one of Shiro’s arms, legs wrapped around his chest as he reaches for the phone that Shiro keeps held above his head, he points to the destruction of the medbay. “Not here.”

They both look at him shame-faced, but neither of them back down. Which is, Hunk realizes with a sigh, Shiro and Keith in a closed-caption. He points imperiously at the doors. They abscond.

He’s still putting the medbay to rights when Keith slinks back in looking awkward and a little pink around the ears.

“Lost the tussle with Shiro?” Hunk guesses.

Keith blinks at him and turns an even darker shade of pink. “He has stupid long arms,” he mumbles before shaking himself and fixing Hunk with a sharp look. “I came to apologize.”

Hunk blinks. “For?”

Hunk is fascinated as Keith turns about the same shade as his old jacket. “Uh, the, uh,” Keith rubs his nose and looks at his feet. “Climbing all over you and then falling asleep on you.”

“Oh!” Hunk pats him on the back, making him rock a little. “Dude, you were high as hell! No worries.”

“Not that high,” Keith mutters.

“What?”

Keith locks him with an intense stare. “I said, not that high.”

Hunk blinks as Keith gets right into his personal space. Keith fists a hand in his shirt and pulls him down until they are eye level. “I don’t need to be high to do this.”

Then Keith kisses him. 

It’s a chaste little thing. A mere press of Keith’s lips to his own, but Hunk’s brain does a complete BSOD.

Keith lets him go and glowers up at him. Hunk blinks for a second, but he’s not one of the Garrison’s prodigies for nothing. “I don’t know,” he says, thoughtfully. “I think that hypothesis needs further testing.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but his hands move sure and firm up Hunk’s neck to draw him into another kiss, this one much less chaste, so Hunk figures that’s okay.


End file.
